LCG Pastor: Valentines Day: A Day For Beating Women With Animal Skins

The fun never ceases in Living Church of God. If you bought a Valentines Day card for your sweetheart you were taking part in a ritual that allows for beating of women with bloody animal flesh.  That ranks right up there with the other favorite of Meredithism - red ornaments on Christmas trees are bull's testicles. I have to say I have seen more "yucky" things at Armstrongite Feast of Tabernacles sites than I ever have on Valentines day.

What is with Meredithism that is is so focused on blood, guts and gore?  They have went from beating women with animal skins to Meredith advocating spanking them.  So what is really the difference here?

Whatever.

The origins of Valentine’s Day are very clearly pagan and pre-Christian. Research into the details of where it came from can take you all sorts of places (some very yucky places, frankly), but standing out among them is Lupercalia, a pagan fertility ritual celebrated in February that involved, among other things, animal sacrifices (goats and dogs, apparently) and whipping women with strips made from the animals’ bloody flesh. Yes, I wish I was kidding.

If you want to just dip your toes a wee bit into the origins of Valentine’s Day, the History channel website is making it easy, with an interactive graphic (I’m not sure why a graphic that doesn’t do anything but sit there is called “interactive,” but there you go) and a video that shows a painting (apparently by Jon Foster) of a fellow looking delightfully popish presiding over a sacrifice-the-critter-and-hit-the-ladies-with-carcass-straps ceremony. (Full disclosure: The History channel video also shows old “classic” paintings with naked people. What is it with “classic” artists and naked people?)

So, no pagan, hit-your-woman-with-bloody-animal-parts, Lupercalia-warmed-over, Jeremiah 10:2 (et al.)-violating Valentine’s Day for me, thanks!

Valentine’s Day: A day for beating women with bloody animal skins? 

Wallace Smith

One thing I do have to hand to Wallace Smith is that he allows comments on his blog and he actually carries on a half way decent conversations with those that disagree with him, which is NOT something that would happen with Prophet Robert Thiel.  

Idiots In The Pulpit: Buzz Aldren Does What Many People Would Like To Do!

Here is an idiot minister who claims Buzz Aldren never walked on the moon.  

Pay close attention towards the end of the clip to see Aldren do what so many people would 

like to do to some ministers (including many in Armstrongism).

Van Robison on "Are You Offended Because Many Challenge the Validity of the Bible?"

Are You Offended Because Many Challenge the Validity of the Bible?

Searching for answers does not mean that one must automatically accept that the entire Bible is pure truth.  Nor does it mean that everything in the Bible is fiction.  Some don't like what they call "cherry picking", but who reads a newspaper and believes that everything in it is true, or that it is without bias?  It is very true that none of us would believe in Jesus Christ without the four Gospels and what we read about the life of Christ.  It has been passed down from that time forward.    We can either believe that Jesus Christ in fact is real and did exist or alternatively we can choose to not believe.  Either way, Jesus Christ has never appeared to any of us in a physical and visible form and spoken with us, so then all belief in Jesus is strictly based upon FAITH.  It is more than obvious that there would be no faith in Jesus without the Bible.  Still that does not make everything penned in the Bible---truth, as apologists want everyone to believe.

For those who want to believe that the Bible is 100% total truth, you have to admit that you only believe that based upon "faith" and not because you can prove it.  Many attempt to prove the Bible is infallible and inerrant, but it is impossible to do so.  Quoting from the Bible itself is not proof that it proves itself, simply because any human writer throughout history with pen in hand could write "thus saith the Lord" or any type of similar saying and then proceed to pen anything they wished to that phrase in an attempt to cause the readers to believe that God was the author, when He was not.  Like anyone I also quote from the Bible.  If faith in Jesus Christ hinges totally upon the belief that everything in the Bible from cover to cover is absolute truth, then it seems to me that those who think that way, do not really place faith in Christ, but in INK on PAPER.

There are two books in the Old Testament that do not so much as mention God and yet we are suppose to believe that these two accounts are "inspired" by God?  As with everything else, I have read how Bible apologists defend this issue, but it does not hold water.  The word "Easter" is found in the New Testament and it is a very obvious and flagrant insertion and not based upon the real meaning of the word from the original.  Should we deny Jesus Christ because even one word in the Bible is found to be a complete fraud?  The idea that you "cannot" believe in Jesus Christ "unless" you accept that the entire Bible is the infallible and inerrant word of God, is simply not reality.  I for one do believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and at the same time I discount that many things in the Bible are inspired by God.  What is the real reason people are offended by those who question the validity of the Bible in many parts of it?

Some sources have published entire books about the origin of the Bible and as with all other issues in human life, there are disagreements and differences of opinion.  On one side there are those who publish books in
defense of the "inspiration" of the Bible and then there are those who publish books dealing with many of the issues in the Bible and challenging what is said.  Often times it is the Bible apologists who attack the person
rather than confronting the subject matter and issues.  So when those who challenge subjects in the Bible such as who really authored the first five books of the Old Testament, the worldwide flood and Noah's ark and many other issues, the authors are often slandered.

Is it possible to confront facts, rather than to deal with issues on an emotional level?  We see the identical tug-of-war with "Biblical" archaeology.  On one side, there are those who publish their "findings" and assert that they have positive proof that the Old Testament is valid history and there are those who publish books detailing that archaeology proves that O.T. history has been greatly distorted as to what truth really is.  So who do you believe? Each side cast stones at the other.  I am not sure that it is even humanly possible to not have preconceived bias.

I am not sure what the issue is with Bible apologists, because it is not sufficient that one believes in Jesus Christ, unless one also accepts that the Bible is the total word of God.  Why is that?  Again, of course no one would believe in Jesus Christ without the Bible, but must we believe that it is totally true in every detail?  I wonder why Jesus Christ taught to BEWARE of false prophets and teachers, unless such people put words in the mouth of God that are not true, and Jesus knew it.  Is what is called "the Bible" an exception to potential deception?  I wonder why Jeremiah in the Old Testament spoke about LYING SCRIBES, false prophets, false pastors and false teachers?  How much of what we read in the Bible came from such sources?  So we read that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God" and yet we have no clue exactly what that "all scripture" is, that is supposed to be inspired by God.  The writers and those who compiled the many different writings into one volume and called it "the Bible", could just as easily have inserted many other works or deleted from some texts they included and they would still call it the "Holy" Bible and people would believe it.

I seriously doubt that God Almighty sat down at His desk, penned the Bible in His own hand writing and then sent it to earth by Fed-Ex or Ups.  Did He really dictate word for word what we read, to those who penned it?  I would suggest that if anyone believes in Jesus Christ, while doubting Bible infallibility, then that is OK.    In fact if one wants to be an atheist, that is their decision.  No one but God Himself really knows all truth and I have no doubt that there is no human being who ever lived, apart from Jesus Christ who understood then or now what all truth is.  Casting stones never serves a good purpose.  Jesus even stated once, that he that is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone (talking about the woman taken in an adultery).

To proclaim that if one does not believe the Bible from cover to cover is totally inspired by God, misses the point that Jesus Christ never taught such a belief.  In fact Jesus Christ never mentioned a book called the New Testament, which was penned many years after the life of Christ, nor did Jesus mention the name of a man called the "apostle" Paul, or speak of a book called the book of "Revelation."  We all have an emotional attachment to what we want to believe.


Van Robison